The Golden Rule gets me into trouble a lot. I love to use sarcasm, and all my friends and family didn't mind heaping it on me in return, which I had no problem with at all. But then I married into a family that has thin skin. Very. Thin. Skin.

Now I can't treat others the way I would treat myself. If I do, I end up hurting a lot of feelings. In that case, a "platinum rule" like mentioned above is required.

I dunno; my general position is that making concessions to unreasonable people is usually a mistake, particularly from a long-run perspective ("give an inch" and all that). From Adam's essay:

The key recognition is that, as human beings with a theory of mind, we may not have perfect knowledge of how another person is feeling at any given moment, we can make reasonable extrapolations, and that is all that universal utilitarianism requires. This ethical system does not demand that we use some sort of sixth sense to gauge with exacting precision how each person feels about their situation. Instead, it asks us to consider how a reasonable person would feel and act in a given situation, approximate the net happiness and suffering produced by an action's effects on all relevant people, and make our decision based on those grounds. (If it were otherwise, this moral system could be held hostage by the most unreasonable person, the one who histrionically suffered the greatest self-inflicted harm as a result of any real or perceived offense.)

And, no offense, your in-laws sound like a textboox example of that last bit.

I agree that it's hard to implement the platinum rule, since you don't know exactly what others want (especially wives, right guys?).

I don't think that's inherently the case, but there does seem to be some degree of socialization pressure on women against having well-thought-out, well-reasoned opinions, as opposed to gut-level and heavily mood-influenced preferences or prejudices ("women are more emotional"). And there seems to be a great deal of socialization pressure on women to preferentially communicate their wishes in an indirect, implicit, or passive-aggressive fashion, sometimes to such a degree as to invite being misinterpreted as a symptom of an undeveloped theory of mind. This is dysfunctional, since it does not increase satisfaction of either partner in a relationship and needlessly creates conflict and frustration, and there's no good reason women (and men) can't overcome these sorts of pressures and learn to communicate effectively; hence, expressions implying that this is "normal" (in the sense that the bulk of humans infuriatingly confuse with "desirable") make me uneasy.

Now I can't treat others the way I would treat myself. If I do, I end up hurting a lot of feelings. In that case, a "platinum rule" like mentioned above is required. I agree that it's hard to implement the platinum rule, since you don't know exactly what others want (especially wives, right guys?).

I feel I must take exception to your points on wealth and happiness [...] one novelty that I can't imagine declining is the joy of being spared the financial despair and hardship that so many people endure.

Erm, did you actually read the post?

Once a person has sufficient resources to provide for basic material needs and comforts, additional money does nothing at all to increase one's level of happiness or contentment, and may even decrease it.

Obviously, there is a certain minimum level of wealth required for most people to be happy, but beyond this the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

For some people, the pursuit of wealth seems to be an addiction in the same manner as gambling, sex, food, drink or extreme sports are for others - all about the thrill of the moment. This is not to say that this particular addiction is necessarily as destructive as many of the others often are; the point is that short-term pleasure and long-term happiness can often be in conflict with each other.

Second, invariably treating others as they want to be treated invites and eventually guarantees exploitation; treating people as they want to be treated allows one to be held hostage by the most demanding and unreasonable person one has contact with. Instead, the best thing to do is to treat others the way a reasonable person would want to be treated, and the simplest criterion for this is to consider one's own desires if one were in a similar situation.

Maybe that doesn't directly contribute towards one's happiness, but it certainly detracts from potential unhappiness.